Covert Affairs (USA Network, Tuesdays, 9/8C) returns this evening with a bit of a time jump following Annie Walker’s intriguing conversation with Henry Wilcox – who hasn’t taken his son’s death very well, and ‘the conversation’ with her and Auggie. Then it slides back to the morning after ‘the conversation’ and things go pear shaped.
We open with Annie (Piper Perabo) riding an elevator to a gun fight then skip back to get more of her encounter with Wilcox (Gregory Itzin) – and his making a few serious predictions involving Auggie (Christopher Gorham) and Arthur Campbell (Peter Gallagher). Afterwards, Annie and Auggie have ‘the conversation’ – making their feelings for each known (and how!).
When the first of Wilcox’s predictions come true, Annie heads off to Medellin, Colombia to find out if there’s more to what Wilcox has said – and how it will impact Auggie and Arthur. Naturally, Auggie doesn’t get mad – he just follows her. Which leads to their getting off on the wrong foot with the local CIA head agent, Calder Michaels (Hill Harper).
Meanwhile, back in DC, Arthur and Joan (Kari Matchett) make romantic plans after discovering that Annie and Auggie are likely dating – then Arthur pulls a phone out of a secret compartment in his desk drawer to check on the new couple and begs off the romantic plans. And in another meanwhile, Joan gets an unexpected bit of good news…
As Annie and Auggie investigate the link that Wilcox gave her, bodies pile up and the link becomes a potential source of problem for him and Arthur. Just as Wilcox predicted…
Much of the season premiere, Vamos – written by series creators Matt Corman and Chris Ord and directed by Stephen Kay, was shot in Colombia (yes, they actually do shoot in the foreign locales where the episodes take place) and so we get to see action in the most interesting locations ranging from parks to distinctly unique neighborhoods.
Vamos is a fast-paced episode, even for Covert Affairs, and presents us with new secrets (Auggie is holding back a juicy one from Annie, for just one example) and surprises (yes, plural) that come as a complete shock. The season premiere is clearly setting up a season-long arc that will be the most complex one the show has given us so far – and that’s saying something.
There’s so much going on that I’m guessing the elevator situation in the teaser won’t be resolved for a while – but there’s plenty of drama going on to occupy us until it is.
Just about the only aspect of Covert Affairs’ fourth season premiere that is disappointing is that the opening credits, with their perfect theme music, seem to have gone away. That may give us thirty or forty seconds more story, but it also deprives us of that short burst of goosebump cool that it provided. Nothing really makes up for that.
Final Grade: A-
Photos by Cesar Carillo/Courtesy of USA Network